From Deindustrialization to a Reinforced Process of Reshoring in Europe. Another Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is an interesting and timely reflection on the process of reshoring in Europe. The author studies a very topical topic at present, providing a scientific analysis above the media debate and the topic of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. I recommend its publication in Land with practically no changes, except in the last section.

The author abruptly ends the article and must previously point out the limitations of his study and future research based on his work.

Specifically, the limitations are multiple and should be highlighted: a limited and arbitrary number of industrial sectors is chosen, which are a good sample, but do not ensure extrapolation to the rest of the industry; the role of small and medium-sized enterprises, essential at a territorial level in much of Europe, is underestimated; a quantitative but subjective analysis is made through a scoring method and only indirect sources are used.

Precisely, future research can extend this interesting initial study through more solid quantitative analyzes with more complete sources or by adding interviews or surveys among stakeholders.

Finally, I suggest that section 6 be called "Discussion and conclusion".

Author Response

I want to thank you for your comments to improve the article. In response to your review, I have changed the title of section 6 and added a paragraph at the end of the article in which I mention the limitations of the research and the future research that I want to develop from this work. Thank you very much.

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the article is interesting and original. However, there are minor aspects that should be improved before publication. They are listed below:

11. There are several statements that need to be supported by references. It is not clear whether these claims are facts or personal opinions. See for example lines 35-50, 78-83, 137-146.

22. I am not sure if the assumption stated in the methodology can fully be justified:

“The idea behind this method is that the leading companies carry out processes that are later imitated by the rest of the companies, so that if all the companies with the highest production and profits, or a good number of them, make a certain change or innovation in its structure, this change will be transferred to the rest of the firms in the sector”.

Imitation depends on the stage of the industry life cycle. In maturity, there are few incentives to imitate. I suggest the author to add a comment explaining that the selected companies are making high profit suggesting that they are in the growth stage, and therefore, it is likely that they will be imitated. A reference that could be used to back up this idea is:

Cucculelli, M. and Peruzzi, V. 2020. Innovation over the industry life-cycle. Does ownership matter?, Research Policy 49(1): 103878.

33. The author proposes interpretations for values of the matrix (lines 284-290). This needs to be justified. What was the criteria to select these values?

44. The selection of companies may change the matrix value of a sector. It is for this reason that the author should formally explain how the concept of “top ten companies” is defined. Are they defined in terms of sales? Profits? Size? Etc. I know that it is mentioned briefly in the document (see my comment in Point 2 above). But this has to be formally defined in the methodology. 

Author Response

I want to thank you for your comments to improve the article. In response to your review, I have added four bibliographical references in the paragraphs that you indicated (35-50; 78-83 and 137-146). I have included a comment pointing out the phase of growth and high profits of the ten companies in each sector to justify the imitation effect, incorporating the reference to the work of Cucculelli and Peruzzi. I have added a sentence explaining the assumption of values ​​to assess the results of the matrices and I have explained that the lists of the companies are based on the volume of sales of their industrial products. Thank you very much.